Ian Livingstone: Computer science is an essential part of our children’s education

Ian Livingstone, life president of the British video-game publisher Eidos, published a article in The Independent. A quote:

The National Curriculum requires schools to teach not computer science but ICT – a strange hybrid of desktop-publishing lessons and Microsoft tutorials. While Word and Excel are useful vocational skills, they are never going to equip anybody for a career in video games or visual effects. Computer science is different. It is a vital, analytical discipline, and a system of logical thinking that is as relevant to the modern world as physics, chemistry or biology. Computer science is to ICT what writing is to reading. It is the difference between making an application and using one. It is the combination of computer programming skills and creativity by which world-changing companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Zynga are built. Indeed, in a world where computers define so much of how society works, I would argue that computer science is “essential knowledge” for the 21st century.

Responses

I agree, of course. Big shots of ICT industry rubbishing the current teaching of ICT in English schools and drawing the line between making software and using software unintentionally contribute to anoter current debate, about theaching children to make mathematics rather than just use it.